Kate Wilkinson got a pretty tough grilling on Q&A yesterday as she was in the unenvious position of saying she thinks the compulsory medicating of bread with folic acid was wrong, yet she would not or could not stop it occurring due to our treaty with Australia – the best being offered is a review in October.

It is true that it is much easier to decide not to do something, than it is to pull out of a decision after it had been made by a previous Government – especially when it deos involve a treaty with a friendly Government. But the transcript shows the difficulty of trying to say we think this is a bad decision, but can’t stop it:

KATE The science is actually light on it. I agree with what the Irish are doing, I’d have to say I agree with what they’re doing.

PAUL Well then do it.

KATE That’s why I’m doing it – the first opportunity I’m taking it and asking for a review.

PAUL And then review it, so you could be threatening the health of this nation.

Ouch.

KATE If you drill down into those studies though you’ll find that they’re not that qualitative or quantitative and it is a bit light. Now if we can get a review through the Ministerial Council it’ll be done in three months.

PAUL Oh so we have three months of possible poisoning.

Holmes was very worked up on this issue.

PAUL Forgive me Minister, I read yesterday in researching this that is some link between excessive folic acid and prostate cancer.

SUE That is right.

PAUL And you are gonna put that in my bread?

SUE But Paul it’s the stupidity of this, that the Minister accepts there are these health risks.

KATE Yes she does.

SUE But she’s saying we have to do it so we’re eating up for Australia, we’re going to be forced because of some trade relationship with Australia, surely we should put – public health issues should be paramount, not some diplomatic relationship.

Former Food Safety Minister Annette King said when the decision was made that it was “a triumph for humanity and common sense”.

I think this may become a bigger and bigger issue as September gets closer. If I was in Government I would be looking very hard at how to get a decision on this before the scheduled meeting in Australia. Surely one can get the agreement of the Australian Ministers by e-mail or something to allow New Zealand to suspend implementing the folic bread addition due to health concerns.

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1. What are the Irish doing exactly? and
2. What’s the decision point with the Aussies? I know that we share food standards with them, but are the Aussies wanting to press on with folic acid dosing in bread too? Or are they against it?

I saw the interview yesterday and Kate looked very uncomfortable.
What amazes me that there was no debate in parliament on this matter. It has two sides to it and both are somewhat persuasive.Surely that is what parliament is about.
Wilkison was never going to come out looking good – when you oppose legislation personally your heart is not in it.
However I thought Holmes was like a rabid dog, on to his bad habit of not letting people finish answers. Kedgely was ok, but you know full well she was playing politics.
Surely we can ring up and tell the arrogant Aussies that we intend delaying things because of alleged phytosanitary reasons, just like the import of NZ apples into Australia.
The thing that annoys me the most, that we are arguing over matters than 90% of the population have no idea what they are talking about. Like me !!!

My sometime insomniac mother reports that NewstalkZB’s midnight-to-6am talk-back was on nothing but this issue. Now sure, that’s a particular cross-section of the community whose attitudes can be discounted to a degree, depending on the issue (sorry Mum), but it makes it something National needs to address, for two reasons. One, the overwhelming sense was that despite giving the Aussies a brief bloody nose this could be ended with the simple stroke of a pen (something Kate Wilkinson’s old colleague Katherine Rich has been helpfully pointing out). And two, Kate Wilkinson looks weak. That was the opinion of a majority of callers.

“arguing over matters than 90% of the population have no idea what they are talking about. ”

As is common – that’s why we hope that parliament will do the groundwork and make good decisions for us.
Have things changed since the original decision was made?
Or was that a bad decision?
Whether it was a bad decision or consequent information means it is now known to be risky, health must override any other consideration. Or, if we get toxic toys imported from a country do we just let that ride too because we have a trade agreement with the country.

A quick comment. I am currently reading an excellent book “The End of Food” by Paul Roberts which makes you think about the food we are eating and how globalisation impacts on what we eat.Farming has a future but increasingly the corporate type.
To read that chickens are fattened with hormones and food in 40 days while naturally grown chickens mature in 70 days.
There is another in the series by the same author “The End of Oil”. Good to challenge your thinking.
Available on order in NZ or available on Amazon.

Key needs to take charge of this and pull the pin as soon as possible, because the pissed-off bakers are going to get very noisy as September draws near.

Besides, the science on this is not universally accepted, and it is a real Nanny-state issue for the public – the sort of thing we dumped Labour for.

Look out for the silence from Labour on this. This was Annette King’s baby so they are stuck in the mud on this – they don’t want to go against public opinion but they also don’t want to turn against Annette.

Packaging changes take some time, roughly 6 – 8 weeks.. If there is no change in the next day or two, it will be too late, the bags will be on the press. Them we will be feed folate no matter what, as who will throw away all those new bags?

I don’t understand… I agree with common Australia New Zealand standards for food (and other products) that will be sold in both countries. But surely bread is a low value bulky item that doesn’t have a long shelf life and wouldn’t possibly be sent across the Tasman?

The loud mouth blowhard Annette KING is keeping her lips sealed on this. It leads to me to believe that signing up to this was a deliberate sabotage act to embarrass the National Government when they took office, just as CLARK went about signing up Unionists and extending the contracts of other no-hopers, when she realized she was for the axe and as CULLEN wasted a billion or so on the Railways.
It was sad to hear the Minister say that she had to follow the law even though she didn’t agree with it…I don’t agree the Government’s duty is to follow the will of the people, and alter the law to suit. In any case it seems she can delay the law as the Irish are doing until the science is settled, or she can refuse to implement the standard as ‘harmful to health “as provided for in the act.

A contradiction..
Folic acid is sold in just about every Health food/organic store in tablet form and you can buy it and shovel it into your porridge or whatever. I have not heard Sue Kedgley and her safe food campaigners raise any doubt about these Healtheries Pills.
But now that it is proposed to add folic acid to bread she is suddenly telling us all that it causes prostate cancer and all manner of nasties.

Is folic acid OK if its sold by organic stores but not if its sold in bread made by Tip Top.

I am not supporting the mass medication of bread. Just pointing out a contradiction.
I would have thought that if Sue Kegley and her Safe Food group were concerned about danger they would be advocating doctor prescriptions only.

But we all know that all the food in organic health food stores is safe, so the Healtheries pills must be safe too. So Folic Acid must be safe. This is the great “organic” fallacy. Botulism is organic so it must be safe too!

There is some sleight of hand going on. Someone on TVOne claimed that it would take eleven slices of bread to get the daily recommended dose. This is true and is now accepted as THE TRUTH. However, we get folic acid from many sources so the bread is a supplementary source. I do not believe any pregnant mother would be totally dependent on bread for their daily dose.

I probably get my daily dose because of my normal diet which includes these sources:

Leafy vegetables such as spinach,asparagus, turnip greens, lettuces, dried/fresh beans and peas, fortified cereal products, sunflower seeds and certain other fruits and vegetables are rich sources of folate. So is Orange Juice and other citrus fruits. Liver and liver products also contain high amounts of folate, as does baker’s yeast.
NO ONE needs to eat eleven slices because there are so many alternative source. The bread is a top up!.
Quick and dirty research indicates that the average person would have to eat two to three slices of bread (or equivalent in hamburger buns etc) to get the recommended daily dose of Vitamin B9.

Of course some people don’t eat any green vegetables at all but maybe they eat lots of burgers!

But falsehooks become facts so quickly that it is difficult to have a rational debate.

“an opportunity for National to show it hasn’t been totally emasculated or to reveal its impotence. ”

I’m more than happy to eat my words but be prepared to be disappointed. The Tories have the spine of a jellyfish and would hide behind any bureaucratic excuse, as Mrs. Wilkinson is doing, to delay taking decisive action.

These lame politicians from either side of the political spectrum are pathetic. Ought to be, they are all cut from the same socialist fabric.

The problem can also be supplementation itself. When we get beneficial folate from things like leafy green vegetables, they come with all the complex relationships to other nutrients in the same food. Isolating the vitamins and dosing people with them is almost always inferior to eating good sources of natural nutrition. High levels of beta-carotene raise lung-cancer risks, for example.

I understand the supplement is to assist in foetal development, so therefore should be targetted to pregnant women. This would make much more sense as being dispensed as a free supplement when pregnancy is first confirmed by the doctor (and probably cheaper than putting it in all breads) so the risk of prostate cancer is avoided (since the at-risk group is men). Annette King clearly made a bad decision on this, the Ozzies seem to have made a bad decision on this. I’m surprised Key and his advisors haven’t spotted that this issue is going to flare up, and he needs to step in and save McNational from getting another big F- on this one.

Folic acid doesn’t just prevent birth defects. It reduces the chances of stroke, colorectal cancer, depression, infertility and impotence. The average New Zealander is not getting enough folic acid, and it affects these – and probably other – things. It’s also probably reflective of poor nutrition overall.

But that’s the problem. Supplementation is just a band-aid on the problem, not a solution.

I don’t understand the argument that she can’t revoke the standard. According to the Food Act, she has complete authority to do so:
Food Act 1981
Part 2A Food standards
11L Amendment and revocation of food standards
(1) The Minister may at any time amend or revoke any food standard.

Giving women a supplement may be too late – once they find out they are pregnant.

I had a quick sqizz at the wiki on folic acid and there is a ot more to this than a simple decision on birth defects versus cancer risk etc. The dosing of foods (mainly flour) has been happening in a lot of places.

“I don’t think in this case, it’s not fair to blame Annette King, because when she made her decision, there was different information. A lot of this latest work has only come out in the last six to eight months and that’s why we think the government needs to have another look at this.”

Those interested should look at this link from an American medical (nursing) site for an up to date view on folic acid levels. An internet search for the California study might also give RS more details of added folic acid levels:

Thanks for the link. So the “high doses” was 1mg, which is two and a half times the RDA and the equivalent of 20 slices of fortified bread.

How many slices of bread does the average Kiwi eat?

Presumably the argument against opt-in fortified breads is that the target demographics of poor eaters won’t opt in. It’s a very patriarchal position – people don’t know what’s best for them, so the State has to make their choices for them. Practically speaking, opt-out would be more sensible. Have alternatives that aren’t fortified for people concerned about too much folic acid.

Further on this issue, Key and Wilkinson greatly underrate the significance of bread to people.

Of course for many decades it hasn’t been the staple food that it was early last century, when prices were controlled by the Government, which also ran a bread research institute (that would be handy now). However, it’s still perhaps the biggest non-alcohol item in supermarkets and there is a lingering concern in people about security of bread supply. This is a hugely important food, especially to families of ordinary people. It may be a mere trifle in Bellamy’s, but bread is big in the households of most New Zealanders.

The last time I’m aware fears about bread occurred was as in the 1970s in Christchurch when a strike threatened supply and a riot almost broke out at a local supermarket, to the stage of glass being broken, and police being called to control shoppers.

Key and Wilkinson are out of touch on this issue. It is going to more than bite National in the bum. It’s going to tear out a cheek from the party’s blue arse.

There is no substantive evidence supporting the folate issue’s medical claims.
@ Pundit ‘s they failed to understand ( called me a fool, then censored my reasonable comments regarding this debate- I thought I was back at Labour’s blog ‘The Standard ‘ ).
Unfounded medical claims are what this policy is based on.
AustraliaNZ regulation ‘ mass medicalization’ policy serves to ‘drop the border’ quicker than ‘someone’s restructuring for a cheap sale in the privatization scheme’.
Anyway I hope my point gets through here- there is no empirical evidence for the claims.

Comments.. from NBR From The Horses Mouth.. The Depth of National Worrying! by Rusty Kane.

Some breads only is way to go

The Bread Bakers choice of adding Folic Acid to some breads only is the obvious and sensible way to go about this. It should still placate the idiots in Australia – since when does bread made in NZ get sold in Oz?. Safety of the population majority has to be at the forefront.

Folic acid

key needs to move swiftly to stem the damage done by kate wilkinson in her q & a interview!!
we want a government that is in control to repair the damage done by 9 years of cullen/clark incompentence! not one that is controlled by beauracrats!
the public service has been stacked with “lefties” and a prime mission of our new govt must be to weed them out !!

Two comments on NBR The Horses Mouth… The Depth of National Worrying.. By Rusty Kane..

Some breads only way to go

The Bread Bakers choice of adding Folic Acid to some breads only is the obvious and sensible way to go about this. It should still placate the idiots in Australia – since when does bread made in NZ get sold in Oz?. Safety of the population majority has to be at the forefront.

folic acid

key needs to move swiftly to stem the damage done by kate wilkinson in her q & a interview!!
we want a government that is in control to repair the damage done by 9 years of cullen/clark incompentence! not one that is controlled by beauracrats!
the public service has been stacked with “lefties” and a prime mission of our new govt must be to weed them out !!

Two comments on NBR The Horses Mouth… The Depth of National Worrying! by Rusty Kane.

Some breads only is way to go

The Bread Bakers choice of adding Folic Acid to some breads only is the obvious and sensible way to go about this. It should still placate the idiots in Australia – since when does bread made in NZ get sold in Oz?. Safety of the population majority has to be at the forefront.

folic acid

key needs to move swiftly to stem the damage done by kate wilkinson in her q & a interview!!
we want a government that is in control to repair the damage done by 9 years of cullen/clark incompentence! not one that is controlled by beauracrats!
the public service has been stacked with “lefties” and a prime mission of our new govt must be to weed them out !!

I don’t understand the argument that she can’t revoke the standard. According to the Food Act, she has complete authority to do so:
Food Act 1981
Part 2A Food standards
11L Amendment and revocation of food standards
(1) The Minister may at any time amend or revoke any food standard.

Because there is a second item in 2 (a) 11L you failed to quote

2) Subject to subsection (3) of this section, the provisions of sections 11E to 11K of this Act shall apply in respect of any amendment or revocation of any food standard.

1E Preconditions for issuing food standard
(1) In issuing any food standard, the Minister shall take into account the following:
o (a) The need to protect public health:
o (b) The desirability of avoiding unnecessary restrictions on trade:
o (c) The desirability of maintaining consistency between New Zealand’s food standards and those applying internationally:
o(d) New Zealand’s obligations under any relevant international treaty, agreement, convention, or protocol, and, in particular, under the Australia-New Zealand Joint Food Standards Agreement:
o(e) Such other matters as the Minister considers appropriate.

(2) The Minister shall not issue any food standard unless the Minister is satisfied that appropriate consultation has been carried out with respect to the food standard, including (without limitation)—
o (a) Adequate and appropriate notice of the intention to issue the food standard; and
o (b) A reasonable opportunity for interested persons to make submissions; and
o (c) Adequate and appropriate consideration of any such submissions.

11L Amendment and revocation of food standards(1) The Minister may at any time amend or revoke any food standard.

(2) Subject to subsection (3) of this section, the provisions of sections 11E to 11K of this Act shall apply in respect of any amendment or revocation of any food standard.

(3) Nothing in section 11E(2) of this Act applies in respect of any amendment to any food standard to correct any obvious mistake (including, without limitation, grammatical and typographical errors or omissions).

Where Wilkinson gets hung up is sneaky little subsection (2).
Lets take 11E and have a look.

11E Preconditions for issuing food standard(1) In issuing any food standard, the Minister shall take into account the following:

(a) The need to protect public health:

(b) The desirability of avoiding unnecessary restrictions on trade:

(c) The desirability of maintaining consistency between New Zealand’s food standards and those applying internationally:

(d) New Zealand’s obligations under any relevant international treaty, agreement, convention, or protocol, and, in particular, under the Australia-New Zealand Joint Food Standards Agreement:

(e) Such other matters as the Minister considers appropriate.

(2) The Minister shall not issue any food standard unless the Minister is satisfied that appropriate consultation has been carried out with respect to the food standard, including (without limitation)—

(a) Adequate and appropriate notice of the intention to issue the food standard; and

(b) A reasonable opportunity for interested persons to make submissions; and

(c) Adequate and appropriate consideration of any such submissions.

Compare: 1994 No 104 s 39(2)

Part 2A (comprising sections 11B to 11ZE) was inserted, as from 1 July 1996, by section 9 Food Amendment Act 1996 (1996 No 41).

Now I can’t actually get too excited about her respect for teh law and am willing to see the thing through with a review. I would get mighty pissed if the FSA erefused to allow a review, but then I suspect that Key et al would seriously consider unilateral action.

Until then, I recommend that people breath through their noses and blame Annette King for the whole clusterfuck.!

What a joke. So Wilkinson and her National mates can’t do anything because they have signed some agreement with Aus struck a failure. Does anyone think for one minute that if roles were reversed the Aussies would give a fat rats arse about any treaty signed with NZ, give me a bloody break. And if the government is prepared to cower to the bloody Aussies why don’t the whole fucking lot of them resign as it’s obvious we are no longer a sovereign country. Our government has made it’s self irrelevant and we would be better off without all the trough feeders in Wellington.

david, anonymouse
Nice try. 11E only applies if the revocation results in the issuing of a new standard or the issuing of an amended standard.
Does not apply to a simple revocation. Check the precedents on this. The distinction between a revocation which doesn’t give rise to 11E and a revocation and replacement or an amendment, which do give rise to 11E, is pretty clear one. FSA will have advised Wilkinson of this.

Can someone tell me why the Food minister didn’t say something like “unlike the previous government we don’t disregard the law and rules when it suits us” when justifying that she “had her hands tied”?

Can the idiots who RULE us now do anything right . CAN THEY????? they have johnboy key in charge ( i luv everyone) with a stupid grin always on his mug
A thought if this minister cannot change a liarbor act and a arrangement with Australia i say GET RID OF THE MINISTER,(STUPID WOMEN) hell is she ex liarbor party the lines of these two parties are SO blurred now DID I VOTE LAIRBOR by mistake as nationals colour is now dirty purple. SIGH whats next ,bromide for evil men to stop rapes, contraception powder for lasy women,i see they are also adding iodine to stop us from becoming dumbies, Go john key ,with all this shit comming up you might be a one term john dumbboy key

Side show Bob thats my point In so many areas the gumint doesnt have control over the laws it enacts. there isnt room to list all of these but you can best be sure that either a UN or bilateral or multilateral covers pretty much everything

As I said it must be a hell of a shock to a new Minister to find out how neutered they really are

I’d rather have folate in my bread than fluoride in my water. Look up fluoride and hyperthyroidism (which is what fluoride was the treatment for), or fluoride and aluminium absorption, or fluorisis.

I’d rather have neither. If I am to be medicated, I want it to be by my own choice, not some moron who thinks they have the god-given right to decide what is good for me or not – who thinks it’s ok to make decisions for us but won’t take any responsibility for the consequences. They should all be lined up and shot.

You are quite right gd. If the citizens of this country were aware of liberties that had been surrendered or laws signed up to on their behalf in the last decade they would be having bloody kittens. This folic acid controversy is just window dressing, there are far more insidious moves at hand, trust me. Some of the crap that is going on in the world is unbelievable, most of it pushed by the one world government fascists at the UN.

“I welcome people to disagree with my views, to correct my errors
to debate what I assert”
Now that sounds like a great reason to censor people – but in my case you( editor) did not have a reason (someone else made a ‘unsubstatiated’ claim that you’ re a pretentious dicktit).

I have no problem with debate on this issue, but I must say that this slipped under the nose of Sue Kedgely when it was passed in the first place. Why did she not make any noise about it at the time. Perhaps she was keeping quiet in case a ministerial post was to come her way?

Couple of interesting comments on NBR site From the Horses Mouth.
The Depth of National…Worrying!
By Rusty Kane.
Some breads only is way to go
The Bread Bakers choice of adding Folic Acid to some breads only is the obvious and sensible way to go about this. It should still placate the idiots in Australia – since when does bread made in NZ get sold in Oz?. Safety of the population majority has to be at the forefront.

folic acid
key needs to move swiftly to stem the damage done by kate wilkinson in her q & a interview!!
we want a government that is in control to repair the damage done by 9 years of cullen/clark incompentence! not one that is controlled by beauracrats!
the public service has been stacked with “lefties” and a prime mission of our new govt must be to weed them out !!

Perhaps we could trade our fireblight bitten apples for their folate? That would be a fair deal for us. They eat our apples we swallow a bit of B vitamin.
Funny the Aussies have been eating this stuff in their bread since Adam was a cowboy. Used to weigh it into the ingredients when I was an apprentice many long years ago. Hasn’t done them much harm that I can see. They beat us at the netball, rugby,league, cricket and generally tend to get a lot more sex. So boys stop ranting and try a bit. Folate that is.

I just want to throw something into the discussion, as I have heard nought about flolic acid over here in Oz. One of my mates owns a Bakers Delight store and knows nothing of compulsory Folic Acid addition in bread, nor in flour. He told me they are advised of any recipe or ingredient changes. He had no idea what I was talking about. Is Australia being used as an excuse not to change a decision made by a previous administration? Does my friend have no clue?, I’d like someone to clear this up. It would be greatly appreciated

Viking2 as I posted at 11:19, the loaf on my bench has no Folaic Acid, so it does not appear compulsory in Oz at the moment, and as my baker friend told me today, he has no idea about it, so I question what is actually going on. I am really curious as to what id driving all of this.

PamDH making her first post on this blog, at 6.33, in trying to assuage concerns about medicating bread with folic acid, said:”I went to the Cochrane Database and there was only held one small research paper where the sample size is too small to make accurate conclusions.”

“One small research paper”??? Bull! Pam, you sound like one of Wilkinson’s PRs, or one of the civil servants who run the Minister. It’s a recent secondary analysis led by researchers at the University of Southern California. This secondary analysis of the Aspirin/Folate Polyp Prevention Study found that men who took a daily folic acid supplement of 1 mg had more than twice the risk of prostate cancer compared with men who took a placebo. The results appear in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The research is based on more than 640 men over 10 years.

Pam you are doing a poor job of Google searching, if you are really trying. Check the following link, where you will find that Chile is the third country to find an increase in colorectal cancer rates since the introduction of mandatory folic acid fortification. This link refers to findings published in The European Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology.

None of this proves medicating bread with folic acid will definitely increase incidence of prostate and bowel cancer, both already rife in NZ, but it does raise some doubts, which should be satisfied before first, our bread is medicated, and second, Wilkinson wrecks support for National through her intransigence.

Additional point: On Close Up on TV1 tonight, the bakers said it was impossible to get a steady spread of folate in bread. This means that some (medicated) bread eaters could be in for quite high doses of folic acid.

Re BringbacktheBiff at 6.37 and Alan Wilkinson at 7.14, Alan is right. All Australian flour is going to be medicated with folic acid. This means it will go into pastry in pies, and all cakes etc with flour in them.

I don’t think anyone’s woken the Aussies up to what’s going on. DPF ought to start an Ozblog.

Check the Supermarkets and see how many products are from Oz nowdays, mainly the home brands.

Not only will New Zealanders get the folate in the bread, but in every single product from Oz that contains flour. The obvious example is biscuits from Arnotts but check labels and you will see that flour is in sauces, pasta, couscous, cereals, gravy, soup, pastry…..

Bugger 11 slices of bread, some people will get their daily dose from Tim Tams

Rachael Rich, not quite right. things like sauces nowadays contain cornstarch or corn syrup which is in itself a problem. The food chain that once was quite diverse in now focused more and more on corn/maize and corn/maize derived product. The days of wheat derived starch are well gone.
Pasta may not be fortified so you would need to check that specifically.
You are right about the groceries to the extent that they are mostly imported but not necessarily from Aust. They can be from anywhere with a house brand label.
Which is why we have much lower food standards than we did in the eighties and early nineties and is also why we have some many people in our hospital system suffering from Nova Virus. Year last it cost the hospitals $85 million, while saving peanuts in catering costs. DHB’s would be better to contract their food to MacDonalds for you never have heard of anyone suffering food poisoning from Mac’s. In NZ their food is home grown and in most countries it is safer to eat at Macs than any other place.
If you doubt this wisdom ask yourself how many people get Delli belly when traveling?
Unfortunately the take over of supermarkets had led to a lowering in the food saftey standards for we have no control over anything imported.

“Nice try. 11E only applies if the revocation results in the issuing of a new standard or the issuing of an amended standard.
Does not apply to a simple revocation. Check the precedents on this. The distinction between a revocation which doesn’t give rise to 11E and a revocation and replacement or an amendment, which do give rise to 11E, is pretty clear one. FSA will have advised Wilkinson of this.”

PARDON??????? WTF????? This must be gummint bureaucrat speke, it certainly isn’t english as we know it. lol

Noticed the flour in my cupboard has folic in it. I also have some pasta flour, which comes from Italy, this does not. Aussies are in a permanent sleep regarding real issues. I will take my hat off to the locals kicking a stink about fluoridation.

As a good National Party MP she’s now mastered the art of flip-flopping her position on the subject. The previous week she was adamant folic acid was bad, although she could no nothing about it, last night she said UK study proves foilic acid is safe and it’s all go.